Sitemap url's not being indexed
-
There is an issue on one of our sites regarding many of the sitemap url's not being indexed. (at least 70% is not being indexed)
The url's in the sitemap are normal url's without any strange characters attached to them, but after looking into it, it seems a lot of the url's get a #. + a number sequence attached to them once you actually go to that url. We are not sure if the "addthis" bookmark could cause this, or if it's another script doing it.
For example
Url in the sitemap: http://example.com/example-category/0246
Url once you actually go to that link: http://example.com/example-category/0246#.VR5a
Just for further information, the XML file does not have any style information associated with it and is in it's most basic form.
Has anyone had similar issues with their sitemap not being indexed properly ?...Could this be the cause of many of these url's not being indexed ?
Thanks all for your help.
-
Anders,
Thanks for the reply. I definitely agree a self referring canonical might just be a good extra addition on these product pages, so I'm definitely adding that to our list of to do's if it does not improve.
In terms of indexing pages - We have not restricted crawl frequency, we have it set to "allow google to determine the optimal crawl rate". No other warnings found within the search console either.
Thanks for your help.
-
I agree - i probably would ignore everything after the "#".
But have you tried added a <link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/page-url" /> to your pages and see if this will update it? Also: Add the sitemap to your robots.txt if not allready done.
Regarding indexing pages - have you restricted crawl frequency in Google Search Console, or is it set to be determined by GoogleBot? Any other warnings or messages in Search Console?
Best regards,
Anders -
Lesley,
Thanks for the confirmation on that one and the article. Since it doesn't seem like a lot of people on the site are using that address share function, I do not think it would do any harm to remove it.
At least we know the root cause of why it's doing it to the url's. Now the real question is...could it be getting in the way of indexing those url's ?...one would think not, as from what I've read, google would simply ignore what comes after the #.
Thoughts ?
Appreciate the help.
-
Patrick,
We'd prefer to keep the actual url's private, however I can provide further information to help hopefully allow the community to dissect this further:
- It's an E-commerce website, meaning many facets, filters, and possible duplicate content angles
- It seems many of the static pages (/products main page, /contact,etc) are indexed, however it seems the individual products are mostly not being indexed through the sitemap
- While the url's found in webmaster tools under "index" has also steadily been going down, it definitely doesn't correspond with the lack of pages indexed vs submitted within the sitemap
- We have checked robots.txt, and it is not blocking any important pages. (I also had them allow robots to crawl css and js so google could have full access)
- The individual product pages all have the "addthis" feature, meaning they all have a #. + number sequence added to the url's. However one would think this wouldn't be the cause of this lack of indexation ?
Thanks for your help.
-
Yes, add this is doing this to your url. I hate it, that is one reason why I do not use them.
Here is an article on how to remove them, http://support.addthis.com/customer/portal/articles/1013558-removing-all-hashtags-anchors-weird-codes-from-your-urls
-
Hi there
Could you provide you website's URL? It would help the community take a deeper look - thanks!
Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
URLs dropping from index (Crawled, currently not indexed)
I've noticed that some of our URLs have recently dropped completely out of Google's index. When carrying out a URL inspection in GSC, it comes up with 'Crawled, currently not indexed'. Strangely, I've also noticed that under referring page it says 'None detected', which is definitely not the case. I wonder if it could be something to do with the following? https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ranking-index-drop-30192.html - It seems to be a bug affecting quite a few people. Here are a few examples of the URLs that have gone missing: https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/sexual-harassment-awareness-training https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/conflict-resolution-training https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/prevent-duty-training Any help here would be massively appreciated!
Technical SEO | | iHasco0 -
International targeting, translation, URL indexing confusion
Hi all! I rarely work with businesses who target countries outside of the US so I wanted to see if I'm missing anything here on the URL/translation front. I'm no developer, so this is crossing over a bit beyond my realm of expertise... From what I understand (and after briefly review Google's documentation) we should be good to go after having implemented the following two line items... We used a plugin to create different version of our site pages in multiple languages..those live at URLS like this https://www.exfreight.com/fr/ That plugin also implements the hreflang tag and I did check to see that it was actually in the site code Is there anything else we need to do to ensure proper indexing / organization by Google? Should we take the step of creating and adding sitemaps for each language version to our Webmaster account? K6nIhvD
Technical SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Another company's website indexing for my site
Hi, I am looking at all the pages which Google are indexing for my website and have come across pages of another company's website. I have contacted them through their online form and Facebook page asking for them to remove their listings for us, but to no avail so far. Is there a way I can do this myself?
Technical SEO | | British-Car-Registrations0 -
Advice for rapidly declining ranking-- can an old indexed sitemap cause this?
Hi Everyone, Today, I woke up to a dramatic page rank decline (nearly 20 positions) for a client's website (eacoe.org). When I looked in Webmaster tools, I noticed that the site was just indexed yesterday by Google (a request that the webmaster had submitted back in April of this year). Would this re-indexing event have caused the sharp decline? In Webmaster Tools, I don't see many errors (one 404 error that we are planning on fixing). I likewise see no Manual Actions/ penalties brought up by Google about our site. My first concern is that the re-indexing led to rank decline, but I'm not entirely sure if I should be focusing on something else. And if it is the re-indexing, what are there any recommended steps of attack? Thanks for your help! -Bruce
Technical SEO | | dynedge0 -
Omitting URLs from XML Sitemap - Bad??
Hi all, We are working on an extremely large retail site with some major duplicate content issues that we are in the process of remedying. The site also does not currently have an XML sitemap. Would it be advisable to create a small XML sitemap with only the main category pages for the time being, and then after our duplicate content issues are resolved, uploading the complete sitemap? Or should we wait to upload anything until all work is complete down to the product page level and canonicals are in place? Will uploading a incomplete sitemap be fraudulent or misleading in the eyes of the search engines and prompt a penalty, or would having at least the main pages mapped while we continue work be okay? Please let me know if more info is needed to answer! Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | seo320 -
From your perspective, what's wrong with this site such that it has a Panda Penalty?
www.duhaime.org For more background, please see: http://www.seomoz.org/q/advice-regarding-panda http://www.seomoz.org/q/when-panda-s-attack (hoping the third time's the charm here)
Technical SEO | | sprynewmedia0 -
/index.php in sitemap? take it out?
Hi Everyone, The following was automatically generated at xml-sitemaps.com Should I get rid of the index.php url from my sitemap? If so, how do I go about redirecting it in my htaccess ? <url><loc>http://www.mydomain.ca/</loc></url>
Technical SEO | | RogersSEO
<url><loc>http://www.mydomain.ca/index.php</loc></url> thank you in advance, Martin0